I'm trying to revamp our employee's paperwork system in regards to end of shift/day. Help?

I inherited a paperwork/cash handling system from a prior GM. I've been slowly changing it to make it more organized and easy to use, but I still feel like there's room for improvement.

The ultimate goal is to have clear accountability for cash per shift, something clear and easy to complete for the staff, and the ability to use these sheets as a tool for management.

Currently, the employees fill out the "daily cash sheet" at the end of each shift (3 shifts per day) and at the end of the business day. PM shift calculates their totals and the entire day's totals. Each shift makes a deposit (into our safe) for their shift, and then I deposit them in the bank as one large daily deposit.

Information included on this sheet:

Employees that worked

cash in drawer

deposit

total cash due (this is produced by the Aloha POS system on their checkout)

Total Net Sales - I keep this on the sheet so that they are aware of sales and their impact on them.

Once the paperwork makes it to the office, I enter in each sales category (for example, coffee products, retail, food, beer/wine, etc...), the deposit, payouts, CC's, and so on into QB.

I then process the deposits in QB. I have to do this every single day to stay on top of it If I skip a day or two, I end up spending hours in the office instead of managing my staff or maintaining the shop. This system takes quite a while. I've attached a copy of the cash sheet.

How much information do you request from your shift leads? Do you use a paperwork system that might work better for us? Do you utilize QB or Aloha? Can the two be synced up?

I want to make sure that the system I've got in place is easy to follow, simple, and gives me information I would need to settle possible differences.

Also...I don't have shift leads.

Keaton Ritchie said:

If this were facebook, I'd be "liking" this post. Mistakes happen, your drawer might come up short from time to time. If your trust in your employees is so low that you want to make them pay out of pocket for those mistakes, you should probably get new employees or get out of this business.

(Seriously, as we have conversations about how great it would be if the profession of barista could be taken seriously and cafe owners could afford to pay their baristas real living wages, is anyone really going to suggest that a barista taking home 9$ an hour for highly skilled, demanding work should then make up the 10$ short in the till out of pocket? That is beyond ridiculous, and a slap in the face to your staff)
The system in the shop I work at is pretty simple. We do either a deposit or a drop when we switch from morning to evening staff (depending on the amount of cash being dealt with) and do an X cash report. At the end of the day we print out a Z and total everything up. There's rarely more than a couple dollars over or short. I remember freaking out at the end of my first close when I started at the shop because the cash came up 15$ short. I stayed 30 minutes late counting over and over again before calling the owner. His response? "It's 15$, I trust you and it was probably nothing more than a handful of entry errors. Lock up and go home". If your response to the situation would be significantly different, then the problem isn't your paperwork system.

Jared Rutledge said:

forcing employees to make up drawer shortages is unethical and could lead to lawsuits - it's basically asking for a kickback. there's a reason big companies don't do it.

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